Child Labour

Our yard has been sorely neglected this summer. Matt and I have been unable to keep up with the never ending weed creep from the construction near our house. In order to make it a bit easier to pull them, we decided to pull out the grass at the back of the property and put in a cedar hedge. Matt was in charge of digging the trench, and I was in charge of entertaining Simon. Well it turns out that Simon was more entertaining by his Daddy digging and wanted to help out/interfere.

Exotic Versus Domestic??

Matt and I tend to lean towards the more exotic things - our cars have always been imports, we love food from a variety of regions around the world and when we go to the zoo, we like to look at the lions, tigers and monkeys. It appears that our son's taste may lean more towards domestic things judging by his reaction to the common animals at the Papanack Zoo today. We first checked out the cougars and Simon could not have been more bored but when we got to the raccoons, he went ballistic screaming, jumping, shaking the fence and pointing. The turkeys garnered a similar reaction. However, we had to drag him away kicking and screaming from the ducks - yes I said the ducks! They were the highlight of the day and we spent a good 20 minutes there. Thankfully for Matt and I, the ducks were in the same exhibit as the monkeys so we fed them and watched their antics while Simon giggled at the ducks. We were surprisingly impressed with the zoo since neither of us had either been. They had quite a lot of animals and aside from the scariness of some of the enclosures, it was a pretty nice place. There was lots of open space for Simon to run around and with the weather being on the cool side, most of the animals were awake (including the nocturnal raccoons) and jumping around to the delight of Simon.

Excerpts from Ursula

We have missed having Ursula around this past week so I thought I would go through Simon's journal and post a few highlights that happened since my last post.

"Simon is vocalizing more and more. I could swear he said 'change bum bum' repeating after me today. It came out something like 'tse bom bom'"

"With his basic needs taken care of, he was ready to roll. His mood was greatly improved and he grabbed E's and my shoes to go out"

"Your son is itching to be out of the stroller and mingle with the kids every time we are at the school. You'd think the crowd would scare him, not Simon."

"We all played singing games in the basement. Simon is starting to sort of participate :) especially when we play sleeping bunnies and the kids pretend to sleep, he'll lie down on top of one of them"

"Simon plays a mean soccer game"

"We walked the boys to school today and on the way back, Simon had a chance to exercise his legs. He did pretty good but kept losing one of his sandals. This did not seem to bother him or even slow him down :)"

"Right before lunch, Isaiah was playing with the buckles on Simon's highchair. Simon made it very clear to him that this was his high chair but pulling on his shirt, pushing him away and telling him off all the while. Simon is quite territorial about 'his' things."

"Simon was happily playing with 'his' wooden blocks. Make no mistake, they are 'his' and he lets everybody know. He is telling the other kids off and pushing them away if they try to play with them."

"His main goal was to have everybody help him with the little Jack in the Box, he even asked the cat much to her dismay."

A New Friend

On the way to the park tonight, Simon met up with a new friend. His name is Shadow and he mimicked everything Simon did to his great delight. It made for a quick trip to the park as Simon tried to pass Shadow and to keep away from Shadow's mean Daddy who kept jumping on shadow. Unfortunately, Shadow was going the wrong way on the way home and Simon kept wanting to turn around.

100,000 Kilometers

I drive Matt crazy with my constant odometer monitoring. I'm always looking for number patterns and spend a good amount of time focusing on the numbers changing. What can I say, I love symmetry in numbers. Well today in preparation of 100,000 Kilometers, we packed up the camera and went for a drive to capture this occasion. Of course with all my focus on making sure I didn't miss the shot, I actually missed the odometer flipping from 99,999 to 100,000. Because I'm sure you all want to share in the joy, here is our excitement for today.

Skunked!!

Brutus got a little more than he bargained for yesterday morning as he was going about his business. Our timid little dog got a little too interested in something shuffling around under the deck and ended up with a face full of skunk spray. Since it was right into the eyes, it was quite painful and Brutus let out a yelp and come running in with a foaming mouth. Unable to see the source and unable to identify the smell (fresh sprayed dog is truly unlike any skunk I have ever smelled - a burn your nostrils combination of burnt rubber and garlic) Matt came running upstairs to get me up so that he could whisk Brutus off to the vet. Leary of another huge vet bill, I wanted to find the source and I did moments later when I heard something wandering below me on the deck. I moved pretty quick to get out of his path. Poor Brutus was frantic trying to wipe his mouth and he managed to skunk quite a bit of the house in the process which set off a long day indoors of bathing, washing, disinfecting, repeat. Matt was on outdoor duty with Brutus and my Dad who received a frantic call and rushed over to help us skunk proof the deck to avoid future incidents. By days end, Brutus had been bathed twice by a tried and true internet concoction, sprayed once with a swear it works skunk spray, and then finally bathed in tomato juice. He still smells a little skunky but considering the bulk of the blast hit him in areas that are sensitive to wash, it's no wonder. We're giving him Listerine pocket packs now in hopes of someday freshening his breath and lots of wet food - it's a sad day when the stench of wet food is a better option that what his current breath smells like!

'F'ish

The first real discernible word coming from Simon is 'F'ish (note the F is almost silent). He has a smattering of other babble but it's not always consistently in reference to a particular object. Fish on the other hand is always accompanied by a pointing finger to the container of fish on Nanna and Granddad's kitchen counter. It's hard to say no when he asks so clearly even if he does ask for them about 20 times a day!

Richmond Nursery

Our sitter is off for 4 weeks so Matt and I are trading off days and taking advantage of the goodness of our parents to get us through this time. Friday was my day alone with Simon and I decided to see if Nanna wanted to come with us to look at plants at the Richmond Nursery. I had no idea how great an activity this would be for Simon when I thought of it but it was perfect - free, lots of room to run and we got to do something we liked too! Simon adored the bunnies that they had there - they were abnormally social and kept approaching him which he thought was hysterical. He kept doing his Sumo walk for them - I'm not quite sure what he's doing when he does this up and down, legs spread move but it looks just like a Sumo wrestler when they are getting ready to fight. We then moved on to the plants and Simon enjoyed pushing a cart with Nanna and then having Nanna push him. Next we walked around the trees and that meant dirt and mud puddles. Simon had a blast wading through the puddles but was none too pleased when we had to move on. More browsing, followed by another trip to the bunnies and we were done. Grand total for the day just the cost of gas! A perfect way to spend an hour in the sun.

Seamus Patrick Flood

Simon has been bumped out of the youngest grandchild slot by his new cousin Seamus Patrick Flood. Seamus made quite an entrance at 6:22pm and narrowly missed being caught by the doctor on duty. He defied predictions of being 9 to 11 pounds and barely tipped the scales at 7lbs. 12oz. Seamus has a unique combination of brown, blonde and red hair and it's anyone's guess to what colour it will eventually be. We visited Lynsey in the hospital tonight and aside from being a little sore she seems in good spirits. I think she's a little relieved that the birth wasn't as bad as all that. Seamus managed to reassure his parents that he was peeing in spectacular form and peed all of the sheets and his gown. We can't wait for him to meet Simon.

Happy Birthday Braedon!

We headed over to chez Barkers tonight to celebrate Braedon's fifth birthday. Simon was a little shy when we first got there due to all of the new faces but he quickly warmed up when he realized that there were balloons and that Nanna and Granddad were there! It's always hard being in someone else's house with a toddler because you don't know where all the hazards are until Simon finds them. Of course the biggest hazard of all is his cousin Emjae! She does not like having competition around and tried to peg Simon off with one of her toys! Braedon loved opening his gifts and unwrapped about 10 in about that many seconds. Of course what he wanted in the end was one of the pinwheels that Audrey had bought for the other kids. We willingly gave up ours to protect Brutus from a stick wielding toddler.

Like a Cottage - Only Better

Matt and I love being close to the water, but a cottage is not feasible time wise, nor financially. Lucky for us, we have friends who have a big house, right on the lake, with a huge swimming pool. Matt and I couldn't wait to lounge by the pool (okay lets be honest, there's no such thing as lounging with a 15 month old running unsteadily around the deck and pool). Steve and Cindy, our gracious hosts had toys for Simon and even a floating pool toy so we could chill in the deep end where the sun was. It was such a nice day, Simon loved the water after initially complaining about the temperature and was a perfect angel through dinner. The only thing that didn't go well was the car ride home. We were counting on him sleeping for the hour ride but no such luck - he groaned the whole way home but I guess it could have been worse. We can't wait for another invitation back - I hope Steve and Cindy read this :)

Canada Day 2008

It's become tradition in recent years to head over to a friend's house for swimming, bbq and a "fireworks extravaganza". Since we are creatures of habit we were anxiously awaiting the evite for this one. This year was a blast as usual. The weather was perfect, Simon was in a great mood (particularly since he was in reach of nacho chips) and we enjoyed having a chance to catch up with friends that we don't often see. Another couple who had had a baby a few days before us had their little girl there and Simon and her had a blast playing with the rocks in the yard. Simon was not into the cold water of the pool and was pretty miserable until we took pity on him and let him get out. Having a 7:00pm bedtime to adhere too makes for a pretty short evening but since we had to work the next day, we didn't make arrangements for Simon to stay elsewhere so I headed home and left Matt to enjoy the rest of the festivities and the fireworks (secretly I'm scared of the fireworks extravagana - drunk people setting off fireworks in suburbia is a recipes for disaster in past years they have almost set the volleyball net and a passing car on fire). We look forward to this annual tradition next year.